Description

The sequel to Ultima featured several improvements over the original, such as separate town and world maps, and the concept of traveling through time gates into different eras on Earth. Other than that the gameplay is pretty much the same as in Ultima I, with your single character roaming the land fighting monsters and looking for key items.

In the original Ultima a hero from a certain third rate blue planet orbiting an insignificant yellow sun came to the world of Sosaria and slew the evil wizard Mondain before he could fulfill his dreams of universal domination. Thus peace was brought to Sosaria, and the hero hailed as a champion of the people of all time.

Unfortunately, Mondain happened to have a young apprentice/lover named Minax who is understandably upset over his death. Using her considerable powers, Minax travels through time and space to the hero's homeworld of Earth and instigates a nuclear war, thus serving the dual purpose of working out her frustration as well as erasing the hero from history. Of course, as the hero, this works out rather badly for you, and so with the help of Lord British you must travel through time and somehow find Minax and prevent the events which culminate in the destruction of Earth.

Trivia

Development

While designing the game Richard Garriott went to see the movie Time Bandits repeatedly just to copy down the map seen in the film and incorporate it into his game. He eventually decided that the map didn't actually make much sense but still wanted to include a cloth map with every copy of the game. Every publisher in the industry turned him down because of the cost, except Sierra.

DOS version

Little known is the fact that the IBM PC port is supposed to be played on an IBM CGA with a *composite* color monitor (EGA/VGA cards only emulate the display of an RGB monitor). Using that configuration, the pink-striped water becomes blue, the pink-speckled street tiles become red, and the cyan trees become green (see DOS screenshots).

Fanpatch

There exist a freeware EGA graphics patch, which adds some colors to replace that original CGA graphics.

References

The weapon needed to defeat the villain(ess) in the game is a sword called Enilno. Spelled backward, it becomes Online. Sierra Online was the game's publisher.

Richard Garriot in general and the various Ultima development teams in particular have something of a reputation for hiding various inserted oddness into the series. For example, in the map of the solar system in this game Earth is at coordinates (6,6,6). Make of that what you will.

Release history

In its original release this game was published by Sierra Online. For one reason or another, this didn't work out, and Richard Garriot left and published Exodus: Ultima III under his own outfit. It was never re-released by Origin as a single game. They had trouble getting the publishing rights back from Sierra, and it wasn't until Electronic Arts published the Ultima Collection almost 15 years later that the game was commonly available for purchase again.

Unofficial Port for the Apple IIGS

Rebecca Heineman and Brutal Deluxe Software were working in 2011 on an unofficial port for the Apple IIGS port of Ultima II, whose code was based on the one that was used to create Ultima I in 1994. Unfortunately, this version was for 50% completed before being cancelled due to the fact that she could only sell about 500 copies at the time and the steep licensing fees from current copyright holders Electronic Arts. If the port would have been completed, it would have been released on two disks.